


Better in the candlelight

by middlemarch



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies), Frozen 2 - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Marriage, Romance, Royalty, Surprises, time alone in the royal suite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21826867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Revelations and consequences, in the reign of Anna Regina.
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	Better in the candlelight

“I have a surprise for you,” Anna said as they crossed the threshold of the antechamber that led to the royal suite. Kristoff still couldn’t always believe he lived here, slept here, waking some nights in a blank panic at the generous warmth from the hearth, the silken canopy instead of stars, the scent of bayberry candle-wax. Anna seemed to sense it, even in her sleep, and always nestled closer if she was the little spoon or threw her arm as far around his waist as she could if she’d somehow become the big spoon. It was always enough to settle him down, though he was never content until she was the little spoon, her night-plait silky against his bare chest. Right now, Anna was wide awake, her bluer-than-Ahtohallan eyes wide, her level of glee lower than he might have expected. It had been a long day, longer even than they’d grown used to since their mutual regal investitures.

“Eir help us if Olaf had anything to do with it,” Kristoff said. The impetuous, imaginative snowman was much beloved but wont to propose outrageous ideas, like a water-bed with an enchanted whirlpool or hot chocolate coming from all the faucets, which Kristoff had not found endearing when he was trying to sluice off fish-guts after returning from a long-anticipated fishing trip alone with Sven.

“No, this was all me,” Anna said softly. Oh, how he loved when she spoke like that, sweet and gentle and entirely sure, aware of how it made him stop dead in his tracks. Well, not literally dead in his tracks, because when it had, he’d made her stumble a few times and now that she often had an elaborately embroidered cape or a lacy veil trailing behind her, a stumble could easily become a political contretemps of sizable proportions.

“Do I need to sit down?” he asked. “Or wait for you to fetch something?”

“No, it’s right here,” she said, pointing to a drape hanging on the wall with a long, tasseled cord evidently designed to be pulled. He was familiar with the set-up because they’d spent the day at the unveiling of the royal portrait, a lengthy ceremony with lugubrious horns and sprightly, mischievous fifes dueling for dominance, speeches that underscored the aphorism _A picture’s worth a thousand words_. More like ten thousand, a hundred thousand, but Anna had smiled throughout, her official smile mostly and the secret one she kept for him whenever she could chance it. “You must know what to do, you saw me practice it enough before today.”

Kristoff walked over and tugged at the bright golden rope; the sooner he did, the sooner they would be in bed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want a surprise from her, he just wanted her and without any more delay. He looked at what was hidden by the drape and realized she’d managed both.

It was a picture of the two of them, an alternative to the official portrait that hung in the Great Hall, both dressed formally and wearing the jewels of Arendelle. In that, Anna had a delicate coronet studded with star sapphires that could have been plucked from the bay and he wore the traditional regalia of the Lord of Tyholmen, the golden buttoned uniform, the ermine trimmed cape, the hand-forged band of electrum with its rubies and topazes at irregular intervals. He hadn’t been tempted to smile, which the court’s Chief Painter had appreciated; he looked stern but fair, almost kindly, certainly fierce. Anna’s gaze was more mysterious, opaque in its justice and determination. Her ringed hand gripped the scepter of state and there was no evidence of how her palm had been imprinted with its carvings, how long Kristoff had had to rub it between both of his to restore the feeling. 

This painting was much smaller, the brushstrokes looser, the colors more vivid. Anna’s blue eyes reminded him of the winter sky and the summer sea. Her cheeks were pink, her hair blowing loose from its fillet and she was laughing, he could almost hear her. He was crouching beside her in his favorite well-worn leathers, his cheeks wind-burned, his gaze delighted, proud, amused, familiar. Behind them were snow-capped mountains and the woods that made them green, the first snowdrops and creeping saxifrage. Their cabin’s steeply pitched roof was just visible through clouds that were like smoke or smoke that was like a cloud. He’d never seen the two of them together this way before and yet he recognized it immediately. It was a mirror and a window. The frame was simply carved and stained, not gilt, nothing to distract from the representation of their candid happiness. In the bottom right corner, he made out the artist’s signature _Vidar_ and nodded to himself. It seemed the artist could keep secrets as well as he painted.

“You’re awfully quiet, even for you. D’you like it? We don’t have to keep it if you don’t,” Anna said, looking up at him, biting her lower lip. He moved without thinking, grazed his thumb across her lip where she’d bitten it, feeling the warmth of her breath as she relaxed into the touch.

“It’s extraordinary,” Kristoff said. “Just like you.”

Anna smiled and it was like the sun rising over the bay, like the stars filling the sky when they were on the mountain. This time he thought and he let her see it on his face as he leaned down to kiss her, to keep kissing her until they were both forgetting to breathe in the small interstices of adjustment and desperation. She clung to him and he let his face press against her neck. He could whisper to her easily this way.

“I feel a little bad though. We’ve kept Vidar busy, too busy,” he said, taking the miniature he’d commissioned from the craggy faced painter from the inside his vest and putting it into Anna’s hand.

“Oh!” she exclaimed as she stepped back a little, so she could look at the exquisite enameled painting, both their faces in three-quarter view, gazing at each other. Vidar had presented it in a cunning, velvet lined box, but had also fashioned a loop of gold into the filigree frame if Anna wanted to wear it. “It’s so beautiful, it doesn’t seem real.”

“It is. And so’s Vidar’s new boat. The one we just paid for,” Kristoff said. Anna laughed.

“I’d pay him enough for a thousand boats, a fleet’s worth, for these,” Anna declared.

“Well, don’t let him hear that. I may not be your finance minister, but I know that much,” Kristoff said.

“I think you’re the wisest man I know,” Anna said.

“Maybe. I was wise enough to marry you,” Kristoff said, kissing her again. He wasn’t wise enough to put the miniature on her bedside table before they nearly fell into their bed, which was why they had to rifle through the bedclothes looking for it a few hours later. Anna wore only the moonlight, which might have meant he was wiser than he’d thought.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I caught a glimpse of the shot of the two royal portraits, the Agnarr/Iduna one and the Elsa/Anna one, which made me think what the next one would be-- and how Kristoff would feel about it.
> 
> The title is from Frozen 2.


End file.
